Night Before
by Fallen Ark Angel
Summary: Laxus is cool, calm, and collected the night before his wedding. Well, he is after the demon reminds him to be. - One-shot.


It was one of those moonless nights that, in what felt like another life now, Laxus would lay awake, atop a sleeping bag, and stare up at the stars, in some area far off from home, out on a deadly mission only he and a select few others in the guild could take. Tonight, however, this night, was being spent for the last time alone, in his apartment.

Which was kind of weird, honestly, considering he actually hadn't been alone in it for some time.

Mirajane had moved in a little over a year ago. Officially at least. Unofficially, it had been much longer. But tonight was the first (and last) time that his solitude in the apartment would be attributed to ceremony. Honestly, prior to last week, he didn't even know this was a thing.

"Really?" Lucy giggled some, up at the bar, where she was standing around with the two Strauss sisters, giggling over the impending wedding night of the elder. When Lisanna made mention of how, the night before, they should all have a big, final sleepover in the living room and stay up all night, gossiping and talking. Which sounded like a super bad idea to Laxus, who figured the next morning wouldn't be without his stresses.

Plus, well, he didn't want them in his apartment the night before his wedding.

But oh, Lisanna was quick to inform him this wouldn't be taking place there.

"You can't see the bride the night before the wedding," the younger of the two Strauss sisters giggled into her palm while Mirajane, from where she was working behind the bar, only grinned. "Don't you know anything?"

"Yeah, Laxus," Cana slurred from further down the bar, where she had already put a few back for the night. "Ya act like it's your first wedding."

He only sneered though, over at her, before remarking, "Some of us only have one."

"Don't count if you annul it once you're sober," she offered him, maybe, but Mira was only humming then, from her side of the bar top, as thoughts of her final night without him swirled around in her head.

She told him he should do something similar. He should have Freed and Bickslow over and have a nice night. Something. But he'd already kinda done that, the whole 'farewell to freedom' thing, but it had been rather lame and annoying, honestly, and felt really silly. It didn't help that Freed took it very seriously and Bickslow took it as an excuse to act like a complete fool.

And it also served to remind him, really, he had very few friends…

So no. Laxus didn't want to go through that again. Instead, while Mirajane and her dorky friends got all weepy and would wake up exhausted, the next morning, he would go to bed at a reasonable hour and only stress a little, he decided, over the next day.

He did do part of that, at least.

After a strong drink and listening to some music, he returned rather early, honestly, for him, and hoped the bit of liquor would lull him right to sleep. This, unfortunately, wasn't the case.

For someone who'd spent the past however long thinking it was so silly, marriage and the sanctity others treated it with, suddenly, it was all coming crashing down on him.

Which wasn't to say that Laxus didn't want to marry Mirajane. Because he did. Oh, man, did he. But...only in the sense that it was the next natural step. A necessary one. He wanted to get to the part where they bought a house and started having kids. He felt like they were circling in around that in the next five years or so and Mirajane told him that before she even considered that, there had to be a wedding.

And that was fine.

That was okay.

Marriage to Laxus was just a confirmation of what he already felt and thought. He was committed to his demon. Fully. He loved her and cared for her, but on a deeper level, he saw themselves as close friends who were ready to see one another through trials when, maybe, they didn't love or care for one another as much. Being married just a label that solidified those things in the minds of others and that was fine. That was okay. Mira needed that and it made sense.

To her, he knew, marriage was so much more.

She saw marriage as an extension of the hard wrought life her parents lived, before their death, and that their bond together, through all of those hard times, harder than most knew, was their marriage. There was power in unification, Mirajane felt. A divinity. You had to declare and testify your intentions, confirm your bond, not to those who would observe it, but to something higher, more powerful that Laxus didn't understand and wasn't so certain if he believed in.

But she did.

And if it meant so much to her, if this step was necessary in their path, yeah, alright. Whatever she wanted.

Because Laxus didn't have that. What she did. Not just good parents (heh), but also too good a view of marriage. While Mirajane grew up in the sticks and boonies, where marriage was a necessity not out of tradition, but because it was much more difficult, to survive on your own, Laxus grew up in the city. Where while it was traditional, it was also just as easily broken. Reliance wasn't forged on one another, but rather a misconstruction of lust and love, commitment and complacency. Worse yet, while his parents not so stellar marriage soiled right before his eyes, the rest of his days were spent in a wizard guild, where the seediest of mages arrived home with jewels for their women and children sometimes and other times blew it all on women and booze before they even made it.

Marriage was equally a convenience while also being inconvenient. Most didn't stay married and those who did seemed to detest it, viewing it more as a mistake of their youth rather than a reward as they aged.

So no.

He didn't have the highest of views of the concept.

But still, he was also reverent enough to understand that many of the problematic relationships he observed had their cracks before the bandage of matrimony was applied. Or attempted long before the cracks were given a chance to present themselves.

He'd known Mirajane Strauss for over half his life, however, at this point. And they'd been in a relationship for what was hovering on five years. While the first two of that felt rather tentative, with him being gone on jobs frequently and her still seeing other people in his absence (and well, him regardless), by the second, this just wasn't the case.

They both knew what it was about the other person that drove them mad. In both the great and horrible way. There was mutual respect and understanding about both their positions and goals in life. She knew he was always going to be a high class mage and gone, frequently, on only the most challenging of jobs. And even then, sometimes, not coming back home if he didn't feel like it, as he explored Fiore and his own solitude. In contrast, he knew that she was very serious about her position up at the hall, finally admitting to herself that yes, this was what she wanted and what she planned to do with her life. Not just be a barmaid, but, as the Master only continued to age, slowly take over his job more and more.

She wanted it one day.

To be the Master.

And Laxus only nodded, when she told him then, claimed what was once his dream in realizing his own.

It would never be for him. Not really. And watching his woman, an extension of himself, really, capture it in his place, well, what could be better?

She made certain he knew though, right from the jump, that her life didn't just come to a halt because he decided to roll back into town after weeks or months away. It couldn't. She was depended upon by others. Not to mention, she was more than just his girlfriend, fiancee, wife, waiting around for her man to be her world.

No.

Mira had her own things going on, separate from him, and he liked that. A lot.

When he was a boy, this wasn't the case very often. When a mage was out, his wife would come by the hall all the time, waiting on him, needing him. Not even in a clingy way, mostly. It was cultivated that way, by the man sometimes, other just through the natural order of things, for her life to depend upon his.

But Laxus couldn't imagine ever wanting that. What pressure. What nauseating suffocation.

It didn't mean that he was disappointed sometimes, when she couldn't stay out too late or denied his suggestion of going away for the weekend; it just meant that he understood. Like she did when he needed to get away, get more jewels, be alone. There was no expectation of either changing this behavior for the other and, honestly, they were better for it.

So he didn't think that anything would change, honestly. In their relationship. The next day. When he said the kind of outdated and silly words and, even still, when he signed the papers, like a legit contract over the whole thing. It didn't matter to him what the Kingdom or guild thought of his relationship; only what he and Mira did.

Still, if she needed it…

While he was lying there however, the liquor not helping to calm his nerves in the slightest, Laxus found himself not nearly as passive in this entire thing. Again, it wasn't so much that he felt as if he were making the right decision, no, it was more that, while he knew for certain he was definitely headed towards the correct one, that there was a heavy weight attached to that. Not one of despair or fear or anything with a negative connotation at all.

Rather, finally, he was beginning to get an overwhelming sense of, oh, man, yeah, this is happening and it's real and it was still just something silly, something just confirming for others what he'd know for a long time by this point, what he was certain Mirajane agreed upon for a long time at this point, but there was something so final and...real about it.

And while he didn't feel any mystifying or otherworldly powers associated with the idea of marriage, the fact that Mirajane did, that she saw it as a union of not only the two of them, but their actual souls and that they were one, now, for eternity, it was just…

It was a lot.

A lot that he hadn't thought about or considered because why would he, if he didn't even believe in that, and nothing that he thought before was changed, at all, but now there he was, lying in bed, all alone, freaking out because in the morning, well, the afternoon, he was going to go into the Magnolia Cathedral, where he once waged war again his guild, his own guild, and he was going to marry Mirajane Strauss and she was going to be his wife, his actual wife, and in her mind, they would now be forever joined, for the rest of their lives and even there after and...and...and…

Someone was breaking in.

That's what he thought, at least, in his panic and it took him a few moments, as he stumbled out of bed, tripping over his own feet in his haste, and oh, it wasn't an intruder at all.

"Demon," he panted as he found her there, in the living room and Mira only looked bemused.

"Did I scare you?" she asked as he approached, out of breath, to come cup both her soft, pale cheeks in his rough palms. "Dragon?"

He shook his head a bit before lowering it, so he could rest his forehead against hers, as he asked, "What are you doing home? I thought you were having your final hurrah, or whatever."

"Yep. My wildest of fantasies coming to life. Lisanna and Levy drinking too much and falling asleep while Lucy awkwardly answers all of Cana's super probing questions. It's what I'm leaving behind."

But his mind was too fogged for her sarcasm.

"Why are you here?" he asked instead, very upfront. And Mirajane answered much the same.

"Because I didn't want to be there," she told him quite plainly as, when he dropped her cheeks, she only reached to take his stubbly ones in her own, blue eyes alight as they stared into his droopy own. "I wanted to be with you. I don't care if I'm going to be for the rest of my life; I want to be tonight too."

He grinned then, in a way he only could when they were alone, and Mirajane giggled some, when they tripped together then, over themselves, to fall back into bed.

It felt so much better, like the worries or pressure just melted away, when he wasn't picturing a version of Mirajane in his head, so strict and serious about the holiest of unions, but rather being around the actualized version of her, his Mira, his demon, not what his buzzed mind tortured him with.

"Tomorrow," he whispered softly as she laid there, actually looking up into his eyes now as his head angled above her, "we're gonna get married."

"Yeah," she giggled as when he breathed out, she took it back in. "We are, Lax."

Her bangs were down, the way he liked, and he hated it, the way he was blinking now, trying to fight off sleep. Because she was right. Even if this was awaiting him every night for the rest of his life, that night, that specific one, he wanted for it to continue on for as long as possible. Keep her gaze for as much time as he was allotted. Give her his until he was no longer able.

Everything just felt so much better when she was beside him. He'd never felt as calm as he did when she was around.

"I've never been so happy," he told her then as one of his hands reached out, to brush a thumb against her cheek. He frowned though, just a bit, at his own words as this sounded, well, clunky, for one thing, if not kind of awkward. Cheesy.

But Mirajane, the happiest person he'd ever met, ever had known, only pushed up then, just enough to give him the softest of peck son the lips before falling back down with some sleepy blinks of her own as she told him, "Yeah, dragon. Me too."


End file.
